Sources and checks

What is covered

• Jobs: Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS). Annual figures for calendar years 2022 to 2025 (MoSPI's data service does not have the earlier July–June annual figures, except job conditions from 2017-18); quarterly figures for towns and cities from April–June 2018, and for villages too from 2025; monthly figures from January 2025.
• Consumer prices, old series: Consumer Price Index, base 2012, Jan 2013 to Dec 2025, from MoSPI's data service: every group and item group for All India, the general index for every state.
• Consumer prices, new series: Consumer Price Index, base 2024, January 2026 to Sep 2026, read from MoSPI's monthly press releases (9 so far): the All-India index from January 2025 and inflation from January 2026, and each month's 12 divisions, 43 groups and 36 states. MoSPI's data service lists the base-2024 series but does not yet return its figures. Each release's tables are read from its web page and checked against its PDF; the June 2026 release has no PDF. Divisions, groups and states are as first published (provisional); the All-India series is final except for the latest month.
• Prices for farm and rural labourers: the Labour Bureau's CPI-AL and CPI-RL, base 1986-87 and, from June 2025, base 2019.
• Household spending: Household Consumption Expenditure Survey, 2022-23 and 2023-24.

Checked automatically

5,90,795 checks, all passing. The site cannot be built unless every check passes. Known problems in the official data are allowed only with a written reason, listed in the report.

• Jobs: the three rates are tied together (worker ratio = participation × (1 − unemployment rate)), and every published combination is tested; the figure for everyone must lie between women's and men's, and the rural + urban figure between rural and urban; shares of workers by industry, type of work or employer must add up to 100%.
• Prices: every published inflation rate is worked out again from the index a year earlier; the combined index must lie between the rural and urban index; no month may be missing.
• New price series: each release's headline sentence, summary table and annexures must give the same inflation; every table on the release page must match the release PDF; a later release may revise only the previous month's provisional figures; and the linking factors MoSPI published must equal the 2025 average of the new index divided by that of the old.
• Spending: the twelve spending classes, weighted by the share of people in each, must give the average; item categories must add up to the food and non-food totals, and those to the average.

• ✅ Every published value is understood
• ✅ Jobs: worker ratio = participation × (1 − unemployment rate)
• ✅ Jobs: persons lie between men and women, rural + urban between rural and urban
• ✅ Jobs: shares of workers add up to 100%
• ✅ Prices (CPI): inflation reproduced from the index a year earlier
• ✅ Prices (CPI): combined index lies between rural and urban
• ✅ Prices (CPI): no month missing
• ✅ Prices (CPI for farm and rural labourers): inflation reproduced from the index
• ✅ Household spending (HCES): classes and categories add up
• ✅ Prices, new series (base 2024): every release read in full
• ✅ Prices, new series: headline, summary and annexures agree
• ✅ Prices, new series: inflation reproduced from the index a year earlier
• ✅ Prices, new series: combined index lies between rural and urban
• ✅ Prices, new series: only provisional figures are revised
• ✅ Prices, new series: linking factor = 2025 average, new base ÷ old base
• ✅ Prices, new series: release page tables match the PDF

Full validation report

Problems found in the official data

MoSPI's data service appears to have been filled partly by reading printed tables, and the checks find the slips. None of these figures is shown; every one is listed in the report and kept, with its reason, in the downloads.

• Jobs figures that cannot all be right: 574 combinations. Letters for digits ("l0.8", "IN.4", "20J") and figures that break the rules above. Most are in the quarterly series; April–June 2019, for example, shows urban unemployment of 21.6% where MoSPI's bulletin for that quarter says 8.9%. Each such combination is left out whole, since which of its numbers is wrong cannot be told.
• All-India shares of workers by type of work (self-employed, regular, casual) do not add up to 100% (for example 0.3%, 0.4%, 0.6% and 0.6% for women in 2022), while every state's do. The site shows this breakdown by state only.
• 6,192 rows of "distribution of workers" with no breakdown named, often with several different values for the same cell. They cannot be read.
• For 2025 in current weekly status, the "all self-employed" share is not the sum of its parts; the site uses usual-status figures.
• Household spending by item category filed under six states (rural, 2022-23) does not add up to those states' own average and appears to be other states' figures (Goa's adds up to Andhra Pradesh's average, Haryana's to Assam's). Those breakdowns are left out.
• The farm labourers' index for Delhi (new series) is published as 0.00; it is treated as not compiled.
• 22 other figures are published as stray characters (such as a backtick) instead of numbers. The July 2026 price release prints one food index as "109.`39"; the next release's final figure is used.

How the figures are used

• Annual job figures use usual status (what a person mainly did over the past year) for people aged 15 and over; quarterly and monthly figures use current weekly status (the past seven days). The two are not mixed in one chart.
• Yearly inflation is the change in the average of the twelve monthly indices, worked out here from MoSPI's indices, as the RBI and MoSPI state yearly averages.
• Earnings after inflation divide average earnings by the average consumer price index of the same calendar year (rural, urban or combined, to match).
• Household spending excludes items received free unless a chart says otherwise.

Not here yet

• The new bases of industrial production and wholesale prices, when MoSPI's data service carries them. The new Consumer Price Index will switch to the data service once it returns figures.
• Annual PLFS figures for the July–June years 2017-18 to 2023-24, from MoSPI's annual reports.
• State comparisons from the RBI's Handbook of Statistics on Indian States (income per person, wage rates).
• The Time Use Survey and the Multiple Indicator Survey (MoSPI's data service did not return them when tried).

Download the data

• jobs_prices.json: What the site shows, in compact form
• plfs_rates.csv: Participation, worker ratio and unemployment: every published combination, with the reason where one is left out
• plfs_workers.csv: Workers by type of work, industry, employer and occupation
• plfs_conditions.csv: Regular employees without a written contract, paid leave or social security
• plfs_earnings.csv: Average earnings from regular, casual and self-employed work
• cpi.csv: Consumer Price Index (base 2012): all groups for All India, the general index for every state
• cpi2024.csv: Consumer Price Index, base 2024: every figure read from MoSPI's monthly press releases (divisions, groups, states, All-India series)
• cpialrl.csv: Consumer Price Index for agricultural and rural labourers
• hces.csv: Household consumption spending
• sources.csv: Every downloaded file: address, fingerprint (SHA-256) and date
• validation_report.md: Every check and every documented exception